A Battle Against the SOPA/PIPA Prohibition

So much has been said, wrote, battled about the Stop Online Piracy Act and its twin Protect IP Act.

I have curated diverse views on SOPA/PIPA on my Pearltrees. You can click on each pearl to access the link content:

Some of the main issues, apart from the DNS blocking in itself and the threat to privacy by Deep Packet Inspection for instance, are the question of bogus Notice of Take Down and its chilling effect on freedom of speech.

Have a look here at what Milton Mueller says about Deep Packet Inspection.

The two studies one by Oxford University and the other by the Dutch group Bits of Freedom are a good illustration of the Notice of Take down chilling effect
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Before anything, Copyright law needs a fundamental overhaul to adapt with the digital era before engaging into a ‘Prohibition’ kind of crescendo battle.

Didn’t we, for generations, shared our best books with friends and family? Why can’t we do that anymore? We need more fair use exceptions. We need to clarify what is copyright and make the rules accessible to everyone. I like to recall the case of President Obama offering an iPod to the Queen with uploaded music, could he know he was infringing copyright law?

Ultimately, it took time to regulate ISP immunity for third party content generally admitted. These regulations are just going backward, shooting the messenger and asking ISPs to become judge and jury.

There is a hierarchy of norm and in the context of today’s economy, copyright industry is not doing that bad for everyone to be asked to contribute to their profit. Remember that digital sales is also full of benefit for them with much lower cost, no packaging, no store, no vendor,…